


Blood Will Tell

by Raine_Wynd



Series: Battle Cries [7]
Category: Highlander: The Series, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Language, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:18:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3110957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raine_Wynd/pseuds/Raine_Wynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jocelyn asked about a letter I mentioned in His Father's Son; this is the result.</p><p>Also known as the "Chuck's paternity fic."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Will Tell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jocelyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jocelyn/gifts).
  * Inspired by [His Father's Son](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2488271) by [Raine_Wynd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raine_Wynd/pseuds/Raine_Wynd). 



The letter was addressed simply to Chuck Hansen, care of the PPDC, Hong Kong. Used to fan mail, Chuck didn’t think much of it at first, especially a month after Operation Pitfall, when it felt like the whole world was still celebrating the PPDC’s success. All mail to the jaeger pilots went through a security screening, and Lily, the marshal’s executive assistant, usually weeded through what was left, picking out letters she felt warranted personal attention. Most were usually letters from kids, so Chuck opened the envelope and pulled out the paper, expecting something cute. The handwriting was nearly illegible, with words crowding together on the page, but something about it was familiar. With a half-smile, Chuck thought it looked a lot like the way his father wrote, though not nearly with as many soaring crosspieces on the T’s.

_Hey, Charlie,_

_Congrats on blowing those kaiju suckers to hell. You did good. I always knew you’d make me proud to call you son. Or did my brother not ever tell you that you’re really mine? Why else would he be gone from your mother so much? Family secrets are such a bitch to keep sometimes. You be good for your daddy now._

It was signed, with much flourish and arrogance, Scott Hansen.

Chuck knew he shouldn’t let his uncle get under his skin. The man hadn’t been a part of his life for most of the last decade, hadn’t been even bothered to tell Chuck thank you for saving his worthless life, so why was Chuck letting him get to him this way? Except…Chuck knew he’d been born a month early (“impatient to see the world,” he’d always been told), and immortality wasn’t usually inherited. Chuck stared at the letter in his hand, crumpled it, and threw it into the recycling bin. He grabbed his tablet and typed an email to Lily asking her to destroy any future correspondence from Scott, then sent it.

Still, the words Scott had written lay there, seared into his brain, and Chuck found himself headed to Medical before he could stop himself. He needed proof – and while he knew one of the world’s foremost DNA experts was in the building, he couldn’t trust Newt not to ask a million questions and possibly see a little too much. The last thing Chuck needed was for Newt to discover that some people were immortal. No, for this, he needed Grace Chandel, who was the PPDC’s head physician and immortal.

“Can you do me a favor?” Chuck asked once he’d been shown to her private office.

“Depends on what it is,” Grace said easily.

“Can you prove that I’m Herc’s son?”

Grace stared at him. “Why?” she asked.

“Because,” Chuck said. “I need to know. Blood will always tell, you know, and I…” 

Grace studied him, her face impassive. 

“I don’t want to be Scott Hansen’s son,” Chuck finished, breaking under the calm reserve the Frenchwoman presented. “He’s a limp dicked asshole.”

“And knowing that you are immortal as Herc is doesn’t suffice?” 

“Not when immortals are supposed to be all foundlings.” 

“You share your father’s memories; were you aware of any –” 

“My father wouldn’t cheat on my mother or anyone else he’s with,” Chuck snapped. “He’s not wired like that. Not like Scott was.” Chuck forced himself to breathe and calm down. “And I just want to be able to shoot down any attempt he makes to claim me as his. He did before. He’s gearing up for something, I’m sure; now that Marshal Pentecost is dead, he’s going to try to claim fame by association. He wouldn’t try before because Stacker made it clear he’d regret it.”

Grace considered Chuck a moment. “I’ll need samples from both you and your father. Not blood, by the way, but saliva. What are you going to tell him?”

“That I just need to know?” Chuck said. “Look, it’s not like he doesn’t know I’m occasionally an asshole about needing to know everything.”

“We’ll wait until he arrives then to start,” Grace said, and paged Herc.

Herc arrived, looking concerned until he heard the explanation. He swore at the mention of the letter, but didn’t look all that surprised by it.

“Do you really need this?” Herc asked, looking at Chuck.

“You said it didn’t matter what Scott said, but,” Chuck swallowed, “you’ve always wondered, too. I’ve seen it in the Drift.”

Herc sighed impatiently. “He wasn’t involved with making you, Chuck. He wasn’t even in the same house that entire week. Besides, Scott was adopted, same as I was.”

“Can we just find out scientifically? Please?”

Herc looked at him, clearly annoyed but aware that Chuck would keep pushing until he had the answer. “Fine,” he bit off. “But whatever the results are, I don’t want to hear anything more about it, understood? You’re _my_ son. You’ll always be my son.” Herc’s tone was fierce and dared Chuck to argue. “He’s never had the right to claim you as his, even if he did used to look after you.”

“Fine,” Chuck said.

At that, Grace interjected, “Normally, these kits are used to help match survivors to relatives, and in a few cases, the PPDC has used them to disprove claims of paternity. In very rare cases, we have individuals whose DNA does not match either parent.”

“Save us the disclaimers, Grace,” Herc said, “and just get on with it? I have to be on a conference call in twenty minutes, and Chuck, Raleigh was looking for you.” 

“I’ll be right back,” Grace said tactfully.

She returned a moment later with a small bag, which she briskly unpacked, revealing what looked like a pair of cotton swabs with a brush head on one end and two test tubes. She then proceeded to walk Chuck through the process of scraping the inside of his cheek before taking the swab and releasing the brush head into a test tube. She repeated the process with Herc. “I’ll have your results tomorrow,” she told them.

“Come on, Chuck,” Herc ordered, his tone uncompromising. “We have places to be.”

Chuck didn’t argue; he’d gotten at least the hard part out of the way.

The next day, Grace called them into her office for the results. “Congratulations, Chuck, your father is Herc.” She paused. “We also have a sample of Scott’s DNA for comparison, and the likelihood that he’s your father is very slim.”

Herc looked startled. “How did you get a sample of Scott’s DNA?”

“Stacker requested an updated medical record for all living jaeger pilots in preparation for Operation Pitfall,” Grace said. “The prison included a sample of your brother’s DNA, thinking we needed it for police information.”

Herc and Chuck both shifted uncomfortably at that tidbit. “So that probably made my brother start thinking about claiming Chuck again.” 

Grace nodded. “Any questions from either of you?”

Chuck shook his head. “Nice to have the confirmation.” 

“Nice he says,” Herc growled, shaking his head. “Just for that, you and I are locking the kwoon doors and sparring this afternoon.”

“Don’t you feel better now, old man?” Chuck tried to counter, aware that he was probably going to be sore from all the stabbing by the time the session was over.

“Yeah,” Herc agreed. “But that’s the second time you didn’t believe me over something important and needed proof, Chuck. You gonna keep doing this shit?”

Grace cleared her throat. “Gentlemen, if you’re going to argue, please do it somewhere else, not in my office.”

“Sorry, Grace,” Chuck apologized swiftly. “Thanks for doing the test.”

“You’re welcome. Now apologize to your father and settle this elsewhere, please.”

“Sorry, Dad,” Chuck said promptly, and started for the door. From the look on his father’s face, Chuck knew he was going to pay for this, no matter that it settled both of their curiosities.

By dinnertime, Chuck was sore from trying and failing to avoid his father’s sword, and hoarse from arguing that he’d done the right thing. He opted to take his dinner and Max up to the observation deck, where the scaffolding for the new jaegers was taking shape. Just as he’d finished eating, immortal presence swept through him, and he looked up to see a whipcord lean, red headed man dressed in a jaeger tech’s denim shirt and jeans uniform step closer.

“You gonna yell at me too, Richie?” Chuck asked. 

Richie shook his head. “Nah, you already know you were an asshole and an idiot, so where’s the fun in repeating it?” He crouched down to pet Max before sitting down completely. “But I will say that a man can only take so much doubt from his own son before he starts thinking that his son will never have faith in him.” 

“Oi,” Chuck objected. “I just –”

“Need a bit more proof that most sons,” Richie said quietly. “That’s what Herc told me. Doesn’t make it right, Chuck. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt. You know what I’d give to know who my parents were? If I’d inherited anything from them? Your father managed to save a picture of you from when you were a baby. Do you know how priceless that is to someone like me, who got told that, oh hey, that woman who died when you were four years old? Yeah, probably wasn’t your biological mom.” Richie’s tone was harsh and bitter, his face uncompromising. “Do you know what that does to your sense of worth?”

Chuck hunched his shoulders slightly inward. “Anything like being compared to Scott after he fucked up?”

“Worse,” Richie said flatly. “Because there’s a part of me that will always wonder. What my thirst for vengeance comes from someone who was a mass murderer? Or my love of art from someone who always wanted to show their work in a museum? Or is everything I am a product of the things I’ve lived through? Thanks to the Drift, you know, far more intimately than any immortal will ever know outside of a Quickening, just who made you who you are. Thanks to those test results, you won’t ever have to doubt who your parents were.”

Chuck jerked his head at that and his eyes widened. “You…you’re always so self-confident. You act like you don’t ever doubt anything.”

Richie laughed shortly. “Yeah, well, shows you what you know. I was a mess when I was your age, and not knowing who my parents were just made things worse because I could point to that as a reason for why I was fucked up. Plus, there was a time in my life when I thought I could have a kid, and my heart broke when I was told there was no way it could be mine because immortals can’t have kids. She was just scamming me for money, now that I had it.” The older immortal studied Chuck a moment. “Do you get it now?”

Chuck exhaled slowly. “Yeah. I just...my uncle’s an asshole.”

“So you had to be an even bigger one?” Richie asked dryly and Chuck winced. “You gonna keep making Herc feel like he’s a failure as a parent? What happens if he falls in love with someone? You gonna act like his chastity belt and demand he prove that he loves her enough, for whatever definition of ‘enough’ you have?”

“I’m not that much of an asshole,” Chuck objected. At the older immortal’s look, Chuck sighed. “At least, I hope I won’t be. I just…there was a time when I was proud to be Scott’s nephew. He knows I quit doing that after I saved his life and he’s never understood why it hurts that he claims me, only that it does.”

“So quit giving him the power,” Richie pointed out. “You know who raised you, who made you into the man you are, and now you have proof that the only thing connecting you to Scott Hansen is a name.”

Chuck closed his eyes briefly. “Part of me is glad he didn’t get to come in and be a part of the end like Raleigh did. If he’d gotten a chance to redeem himself…”

“He’d probably still blow it,” Richie finished. “Hell, he blew it in Lucky Seven, that time you had the cold from hell. You know what it took to defeat those last kaiju.”

Chuck half-smiled. “Yeah. Raleigh doesn’t remember initiating the escape pod eject sequence; he’s convinced his brother’s ghost did it for him.”

“Wouldn’t doubt it,” Richie said seriously. “Gipsy gave off a vibe of having something else in her wiring; there were techs who wouldn’t touch her. Not until after Victoria Harbour anyway.” Richie paused. “Question is: do you feel better about knowing?”

“Not really,” Chuck admitted. “Kinda feel like I did when the old man pointed out that if he hadn’t been immortal, I’d have been in a hell of pickle when I stabbed him.” Chuck shuddered through a breath and drew Max in closer, needing the bulldog’s reassuring weight. “I need to change, Richie. I can’t keep fucking up things like this, just because something sets me off. How the fuck do I do that?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy, Chuck. Talk to Dr. P’Eng or one of the other shrinks; I had to learn the hard way and that’s not something I can really articulate that well.”

“But you…you’re always so calm and centered.”

Richie laughed. “Because I’ve had more time to practice my breathing, Chuck. You’ll get there, trust me. I was still a hothead when I was twenty-one.”

Chuck shook his head, not quite willing to believe it was possible. He set Max down and picked up his dinner tray, intending to drop it off before taking a soak in the hot tub. “Can I ask you a question, Richie?”

“Sure. You know you can ask me anything.”

“Did you have a father you looked up to?”

Richie closed his eyes briefly. “No, but my teacher, Duncan MacLeod, was like that for a little while. I respect him still, but it’s different now. He did some things that are hard to forgive from anyone. I look up to his cousin, Connor, more.” 

“Did you ever wish you had one?” Chuck asked as he stood. 

Richie chuckled softly as he rose to his feet. “Yeah, I did, which is one of the reasons why I’ve never had a problem supporting yours.”

“Hey, Richie? In case I didn’t ever tell you before: thanks for doing that. I missed you when you were gone.”

“I’m here now, Chuck,” Richie said. “Which brings me to my next point. You need training; Herc and I have decided that you’ll probably listen better to me than him, but he’s going to be helping.”

“Helping with what?”

“Time for you to do more than let your father stab you; time for you to really learn how to fight, Chuck.”

“What if I don’t want to?” 

“Tough,” Richie said flatly. “I’m not letting you loose on the world without proper training. You’ll not lose your head due to a lack of knowledge, and,” he smiled thinly, “we both know how you can be a stickler for knowing.”

Chuck groaned mentally, certain this was how his father - or maybe just Richie - executed one more jab at his behavior, but nodded acceptance.


End file.
